


And Argos Lifts His Head

by addictedtostorytelling



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 16:59:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4927741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addictedtostorytelling/pseuds/addictedtostorytelling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After turning Sara down during the events of episode 03x22 "Play with Fire," Grissom buys himself a puppy in an attempt to get over her and keep himself from thinking that he may have just made the biggest mistake of his entire life. One-shot. GSR from a dog's POV. Contains spoilers from the CSI finale "Immortality."</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Argos Lifts His Head

**And Argos Lifts His Head**

_"As soon as he saw Odysseus standing there,_  
_he lifted his head and pricked his ears and wagged his tail,_  
_for his master was finally home."_  
_—Homer, The Odyssey, XVII.293_

From the puppy’s point of view: the man who picks him out at the banned breed adoption day smells sad, like he regrets something. But the man has a gentle voice and kind eyes, and, when he takes the puppy home, he lets the puppy sleep in his bed with him, and the puppy loves him instantly and infinitely and tries to make him happy.

From the man’s point of view: a rescued boxer puppy is a last-ditch attempt to move on. Maybe if he can feel the adoration in the puppy’s big, brown eyes, he won’t look to her big, brown eyes for adoration anymore. Maybe if he can learn to love the puppy more, he will learn to love her less. And maybe if he loves her less, he won’t feel so much like he has just made the biggest mistake of his entire life.

The man’s name is Grissom, and he names the puppy Hank after two of his heroes, Hank Aaron and Hank Williams, but the truth is that he also kind of names Hank after the shithead ex-boyfriend of the girl he loves without realizing that that’s what he’s doing until it’s too late, and the name is stuck.

Caring for Hank while running the graveyard shift at the Las Vegas Crime Lab is not at all easy, but Grissom makes it work. He enrolls Hank at a top-tier obedience school as soon as possible and trains him up well, making sure to spend as much time as he can with him whenever he’s not working. 

When Grissom is on shift, he leaves Hank at a very reputable twenty-four hour doggy daycare center, but otherwise Hank is with him constantly, whether he’s out in nature stargazing or looking for bugs or driving to California to visit his mother or sitting home, doing crossword puzzles and trying not to think about a certain girl with a ponytail and how much he misses her.

For two years, it is just the two of them, the man and his dog. They learn to trust each other and pick up on each other’s habits. Grissom seldom speaks aloud to Hank, but Hank doesn’t mind. Some days, Grissom smells very sad. Other days, he smells happier. They watch poker tournaments together on E.S.P.N. on afternoons when Grissom is home, and, on weekends, they sometimes go for long hikes in the Spring Mountains.

After a while, Hank starts to notice that Grissom smells different—not necessarily sadder or happier, but like there’s something changing with him.

One morning, he comes home smelling, for the first time that Hank can remember, like he has been close to another human—close to a woman—and he doesn’t seem sad at all anymore.

After that, he starts spending some of his afternoons and nights off away, leaving Hank at the sitter’s or home alone. He always comes back smelling like that same woman and like happiness. Hank misses him while he’s gone but loves him enough to understand that these little absences are somehow good for him.

It isn’t long before Grissom brings the woman Hank has smelled on him home.

And so from the woman’s point of view: she is simultaneously shocked that he even has a dog—because no one at the lab has any idea; there are no photos on his desk, no dog hair on his clothes, nothing that they could notice, because they would notice if there were, because noticing is their job—and delighted that it is so.

Her name is Sara, and Hank doesn’t know it, but, with few exceptions, the only photos she has hanging in her apartment are of cityscapes and dogs: the cityscapes of places she has visited and wishes to visit; the dogs friendly memories from her childhood: her own faithful family mutt, whose death, when she was nine, was her first death, and prepared her for the death of her father the next year; the shaggy retriever who was the first member of a foster family to accept her into a new home; the dog from when she was in grad school, whom she cared for most of the time, but who ended up going to her roommate upon graduation; a dog she’d had when she lived in San Francisco but had to give up when her landlord suddenly changed the building pets policy.   

Sara loves dogs because sometimes dogs have been the only ones to love her.

Some were fosters, just like she was, and she could tell them secrets, knowing they would keep them well.

She knows dogs, and she can tell right away that Hank is the best one.

She talks to Hank like he is a person, and Grissom marvels when she does so, like he never thought that talking to a dog that way could even be an option. She knows just where to scratch Hank behind his ears, at his sweet spot. And when Hank jumps into bed with her and Grissom—after they’re done being together in the way that humans are—she laughs and lets him sleep with them and tells Grissom not to worry when he offers to make Hank go down on the floor.

And so Hank loves her right away, instantly and infinitely.

And as Sara starts spending more and more time at Grissom’s place, Hank becomes more and more her dog and not just Grissom’s.

It starts with little, “Oh, I’ve got to go in early tonight. Can you take Hank for a walk and drop him at the sitter’s before you come in?” occasions, but soon Sara’s name is on the emergency contact form at the dog sitter’s, and she’s buying dog food along with the groceries, and, when she and Hank go on solo walks, people at the park are telling her that she has a pretty dog, and she’s saying thank you, yes, she does, he’s gorgeous, isn’t he? And then, of course, once she and Grissom actually move in together, there’s just not even a question about it: Hank is their dog, and they are his humans, and they’re this little family, the three of them, and none of them would ever change things if they could have their ways.

For two years, it is the three of them, the man and the woman and the dog, and they learn to trust each other and pick up on each other’s habits. They run like clockwork, keeping strange night hours and living a life sheltered away from the place where Grissom and Sara work. Most of the time nowadays, the humans smell happy, but even when they smell sad, they manage to cheer each other up. They take Hank to the dog park and camping with them in the mountains. And they laugh a lot, and he doesn’t even mind it when sometimes they lock him out of the bedroom to do their human things.

But then something changes.

Sara is gone for a few weeks, both day and night, and Grissom is gone most days with her. When he comes home, he smells like her but also like worry and concern and heartache and something sterile—like the vet’s office but with no animals. A vet’s office for humans.

When Sara finally comes home, her arm is in a white cast, and she has stitches on her face. She is hurt, and Hank whines because no one should be able to hurt her—it’s his job and Grissom’s to protect her and keep her safe. 

Grissom is very sweet with her. He has to help her dress and shower and fasten her necklaces and pull her hair back when she wants a ponytail. He kisses her very gently and reminds Hank again and again that he can’t jump up on her, that he has to be careful, be a good dog. For a long time, neither Grissom nor Sara goes to work. They stay home and watch old movies and allow Sara to rest.

Hank tries to be a good dog.

He watches over Sara when she sleeps and cuddles up next to her when he can tell she’s having nightmares. He never bumps her arm, and he remembers not to lick her face. He stays with her when Grissom is out running errands and never lets her answer the door without setting himself in front of her, making sure that no one can hurt her again.

After a long time, both Grissom and Sara go back to work—only now Sara works in the afternoons instead of at night, which means Hank almost never has to go to the sitter’s anymore, because both his humans are home in the mornings, and Grissom is home in the afternoons, and Sara is home in the evenings. He likes things that way, but he can tell that his humans don’t. They don’t get to see each other as often as they want.

Sara doesn’t talk as much now as she did before; there’s something quiet about her, small. Even when she smells happy, she also smells a little sad—less so when she’s with Grissom, but even then somewhat, as well.

Grissom seems concerned for her, but Hank can tell he doesn’t know what to do.

One day, they come home in the early afternoon, a few hours before the start of Sara’s shift. They smell like sunshine, pollen, honey, and more happiness than Hank knew that humans could feel, and they tumble into bed in a tangle of kisses and nakedness, without even remembering to shut the door on Hank first. Hank lets them to themselves, but hears them laughing and is glad for them. He wishes that somehow they could stay so happy forever.

But, of course, humans seem to find happiness difficult to maintain in way that’s never made sense to him as a dog.

Soon the smell of sadness permeates the house again, and Sara sometimes cries alone on the couch when she and Hank are home together without Grissom at night. Hank whines and tries to comfort her, and she tells him that she’s sorry, she’s sorry. He doesn’t think she has anything to apologize for.

But then she’s just gone.

She leaves after Grissom’s shift has begun, and then Grissom comes home, but she doesn’t come back with him. Her smell is on his lips, but he mostly smells like loss, like only half of himself, like he is bereft of something. He paces, stares. Tries calling her on the phone, again and again and again with no answer. When Hank whines and nudges him, he seems almost startled, like he had forgotten that anything but the thoughts in his head existed in the world.

Sara doesn’t come home, and Grissom is like he was when he first picked Hank out at the banned breed adoption day again, only worse. He is sad, and Hank is sad. He is worried, and Hank is worried. He doesn’t know why Sara won’t come home, and Hank doesn’t know, either. Both of them stop eating. Both of them don’t sleep well in their bed without Sara in it, too.

It takes a long time before Sara finally calls, and, even then, things are strange.

At first, her calls are sporadic, but then she and Grissom set into a schedule. Once, she makes Grissom hold the phone up to Hank’s ear, and she tells Hank that she is at a pier, watching seagulls, and that he would like to watch the seagulls.

Grissom doesn’t dare ask her when she will come home, and Hank wonders if she ever will.

But then suddenly she does.

When she walks through the door, holding hands with Grissom, Hank is boundlessly happy and runs to her and jumps up, wanting to lick her face.

But then he smells sadness on both her and Grissom, dried tears—grief of a kind he has never known—and he sits without being told to sit, and she is quiet when she greets him.

She stays for four months.

The whole time she is home, Hank can tell that something is off between her and Grissom. They smell like sadness, move like nerves. They’re very sweet to each other, but it’s like they’re both waiting for something to shatter and break, like they’re savoring moments neither one of them believes will last. Hank can tell that Sara is restless and that Grissom is worried, so he feels restless and worried, too. He starts piddling on the floor sometimes, which is something he hasn’t done since he was a puppy. The vet says that he’s not sick, so neither Grissom nor Sara can figure it out. Whenever the three of them are at home, he tries to be such a good dog, to hold his humans together so they won’t fall apart.

But then Sara comes home without Grissom during the afternoon, and Hank watches as she packs her bag, and he whines because he knows what’s coming this time.

Before she goes, she hugs Hank to her and cries into his fur. She pleads, “Take care of him, please. Make him happy,” and Hank is a good dog, so he will do as she says, but he doesn’t understand why she can’t just stay and do what she’s asking of him herself.

After she’s gone, Hank tries to make Grissom feel better—to lie extra close to him in bed and lick his hands and bring him the best toys from his own private stash behind the couch—but he knows there’s nothing really he can do. 

Grissom just misses Sara, and Hank misses her, too.

One night, Grissom leaves Hank home alone, foregoing the sitter’s, which is not something he usually does.

When Grissom comes home, he smells like a strange house and a strange human, a woman who isn’t Sara—someone dark, someone powerful, someone with overtones of amber and blood roses and leather—and, afterwards, Grissom seems different, resolved, like he’s decided something. Like he knows where to find the thing he lost before.

For the next few weeks, Grissom works a lot, and Hank is at the sitter’s for a long time, and then Grissom is leaving Hank with his mother, Betty, whom Hank had met a few times before when he was a puppy. 

And suddenly both Grissom and Sara are gone, and Hank wonders if he did something wrong to make both his humans leave him at once, without any warning. 

He cries, but of course Betty can’t hear him. She signs that he’s a good dog, but he still feels bad, like he didn’t help his humans enough, so now he has to be without them.

It takes a few weeks before the first Skype call comes in. Betty holds Hank up to the computer screen, and he sees his humans: both of them before him, heads pushed together. They grin and tell Hank they’ll come to get him soon. 

And when they finally come home? He is happy beyond happiness. 

He licks their faces a thousand times each and runs in circles, barking and bounding. 

Then they’re packing him up for his first transatlantic flight to Paris, and soon they’re taking him for walks by the River Seine, and he’s a  _chien de ville_ , and they’re a little family again, and everything is wonderful.

Hank doesn’t really understand it when, after some months, Sara starts disappearing for weeks at a time, only to come back to Paris smelling like desert dust. She always takes lots of photos of him when she’s home between her absences: him and Grissom, napping together on the couch; him curled beneath a table at their favorite Parisian café; him chasing birdies at the Jardin des Champs-Élysées; him resting at her feet while she reads books and waits for Grissom to come home to their apartment after his lectures at the Sorbonne.

After about a year of this back-and-forth, they fly Hank to Vegas, and then it’s Grissom who’s leaving, while Hank remains with Sara in a house he’s never seen before but has smelled on Sara’s clothes during her visits in Paris. 

Grissom returns to Vegas every once in a while, tanned and wild-looking. He never stays for very long, and, while he’s in town, Sara tends to call in sick to work. To start off, they shut Hank out of the bedroom for a very long time, but then they come to get him and take him to the dog park or on a long walk through their neighborhood. The sad smell comes back when Grissom has to go, and Hank wishes that both his humans could just live in the same place again, like how things used to be.

Eventually, Grissom takes a research position on San Cristóbal Island. Sara and Hank go down to visit him once, and Sara suggests that Grissom should keep Hank with him for a while, since she’s working more and more at the lab, pulling doubles and triples and logging all sorts of overtime, and she doesn’t want either of her boys to be lonely.

Grissom consents, and so Hank moves to paradise, where he and Grissom take long walks down the beach. There are seagulls for him to watch, and he meets his first sea lions and learns not to fight with lobsters. Still, he misses Sara every day, and he thinks Grissom does, too. But for some reason she never comes to visit again, and they never go to visit her. Sometimes she calls, and her voice sounds sad over the phone in a way that reminds Hank why his ancestors howled at the moon.

Her phone calls become fewer and fewer over time, until there’s one last phone call and then no more. Grissom is sadder than Hank has ever seen or smelled him, and Hank doesn’t know what to do about it. Grissom tells Hank he’s going to go to sea for a while, that he’s “chasing a white whale,” but Hank doesn’t know what that means. 

All he knows is that pretty soon he’s back at Betty’s house, and Betty is angry at Grissom and signing at him that he needs to needs to swallow his pride and go to his wife. Grissom says, “She’s not my wife anymore,” and Betty can’t hear him, but Hank can and feels sad without understanding why.

Grissom is gone the next day, and he stays gone for a long, long time. He returns only occasionally, smelling like brine and wind and sorrow, but he never remains with Hank and Betty for very long, and Hank almost doesn’t recognize him as the man that he once knew. 

By now, Hank’s joints have started aching, and he can’t run after tennis balls as quickly as he used to. He sleeps at the foot of Betty’s bed and does his best to take care of her. She is not his human in the same way that Grissom and Sara were, but he guesses that he is her dog now, and he does love her, in his own way, for as much as she will allow it. 

He waits and waits for Grissom and Sara to come home again—because they’ve always come home to him eventually before—but after one year passes and then another, he’s starting to lose hope. He wonders if they're gone forever.

One day, he is sleeping in his favorite sunbeam beneath the bay window in the living room. He is dreaming of chasing birdies at the Jardin des Champs-Élysées. In his dream, his humans are with him—Grissom and Sara—and they are happy and laughing. He dreams so hard he can almost smell them.

And then suddenly, he can.

There is still brine and wind but now no sorrow, just happiness—and not just Grissom but Sara with him, those same base smells that have never changed, ever since Hank was young.

At first, the smells are faint, but then they’re in the living room with Hank. His nose twitches, and he opens his eyes and lifts his head, seeing, at last, that they’re home.

Grissom and Sara are with him, Grissom scruffy and white-haired and weathered by the sea, Sara sunburnt and windblown, her face somehow softer than when last Hank saw it.

They say, “Hey, boy!” and crouch down, welcoming him to them, and though he throbs with arthritis, he still jumps up to run.

From the man’s point of view: so many last-ditch attempts to move on never worked, and now he’s bringing the girl he tried to forget home to the dog he bought to forget her by. They’re both looking at him with adoration in their big, brown eyes, and he loves them beyond the telling of it, beyond what he could have ever imagined. They’re his family, and he has them forever now. He just fixed the biggest mistake he ever made in his life before it was too late to fix it.

From the woman’s point of view: she hadn’t dared to ask him about the dog after the divorce, not when it hurt so much to think of the family she’d lost, not when she knew the dog was getting on in years, and that nothing—not even things that are good and perfect—can last forever. Her questions faded into silence, along with everything else about that old life. But she’d still kept photographs of both of them. Just them. No more places that she wanted to visit. Just the only home she’d ever known. And now she’s back to them, and it’s better than any photograph could ever capture, and she’s crying happy tears into the dog’s fur, and the man is holding her, holding them, keeping them safe.

And from the dog’s point of view: the man and the woman finally smell happy in a way that will last. They have gentle voices and kind eyes, and though their faces are more wrinkled than when last they left him, they are still his humans, and he is still their dog. Wherever they take him now, he knows that he’ll be home. He loves them instantly and infinitely and himself is happy with them.


End file.
